[Suggestion] Featured Interest Check?

Started by Acid, May 12, 2012, 09:44:33 AM

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Acid

I'm sure everyone's seen Interest Checks that, to put it bluntly, just aren't that interesting. Many int chks do very little to pique the curiosity of other RPers and to get them excited for the (possible) OOC/IC.

I see countless interest checks that are something along the line of:

QuoteI want to do a Fantasy RP with dragons and swords lol but I have no idea for a story. Also there's a bad villain with a katana. Anyone interested?


I'm sure that most of us agree that the bare-bones essentials (who/what/where/how/etc.) should be the minimum prerequisite for an interest check.
Why not reward those who are willing to put a bit more effort into their interest checks by picking 1 interest check a day to be "Interest Check of the Day/Week." Forum mods/admins who have the power to Sticky topics would be in charge of this. This would make the featured IntChk more prominent within the interest checks forum, thus leading to more attention from other RPers.

The criteria for having your int chk topic Stickied are to provide detailed information as to what your potential RP is about. This includes information such as:
What the roleplayers would be doing.
What type of characters the GM is looking for.
What the story is (this shouldn't even have to be a requirement, but I've seen Interest Checks without any story/plot.)
What kind of setting and mood the story has.
Time period/Genre, etc.

Pros:
-Encourage friendly competition between writers. When competition goes up, the quality of writing goes up as well.
-I speculate that this will encourage people to post more interest checks and by extension, RP more on Elliquiy.
-It would provide a better venue for writers willing to go that extra step.
-It would weed out the "meh" int chks from the more fleshed out int chks.
-It would encourage clarity in interest checks and reduce the need to go back and forth between questions.
-Allow RPers a better idea of whether or not they truly want to join an RP.

Cons:
-Lengthier Int chks in some cases (provided the GM WANTS to get his Interest Check featured.)
-Harder to enforce for casual RPs that may not put as much emphasis on writing quality.
-Competition between writers.
-A negligible amount of more work for the Mods/Admins?

GothicFires

#1
What you are asking you can already do. So you click on a link and the details you want aren't there... click your browser's back button and choose another idea in the list.

What you are suggesting would only make more work for people who are volunteers and it will also hurt the feelings of the people who by someone's standards don't make the cut.

Different people have different requirements and standards as to what is acceptable to them, what might not work for me may work for someone else... what may work for you may not work for someone else. The great thing about E is that we welcome all people with different likes and preferences.

This idea will only work to exclude people. If you don't like something... don't reply if you like something that doesn't have enough detail... ask for more detail and encourage the person to expand on the origional post. Who knows... they may put more detail in their next interest check because of your kindness.
looking for new games
discord: Agara#3507

Acid

#2
Quote from: GothicFires on May 12, 2012, 09:59:57 AM
What you are asking you can already do. So you click on a link and the details you want aren't there... click your browser's back button and choose another idea in the list.

What you are suggesting would only make more work for people who are volunteers and it will also hurt the feelings of the people who by someone's standards don't make the cut.

Different people have different requirements and standards as to what is acceptable to them, what might not work for me may work for someone else... what may work for you may not work for someone else. The great thing about E is that we welcome all people with different likes and preferences.

This idea will only work to exclude people. If you don't like something... don't reply if you like something that doesn't have enough detail... ask for more detail and encourage the person to expand on the origional post. Who knows... they may put more detail in their next interest check because of your kindness.

Can you please elaborate as to how it would hurt someone's feelings?

I'd make the argument that if someone was genuinely offended that they didn't get featured, that they'd probably end up being offended over some other miscellaneous silly thing.

The burden of explaining the story should fall on the GM, not no the RPers. The RPers shouldn't have to do extra work to figure out if they like the RP or not. 

I see very few downsides to implementing something like this and plenty of positives.

Beguile's Mistress

You are asking for someone to make a judgment call as to which threads meet the requirements to be stickied.  Also, only Staff can sticky something and, therefore, unsticky it. 

Each genre and writer has things that are appealing and some of us are good at getting our interests across to others.  Some of us struggle with that. 

We try to give everyone a fair chance to find stories and/or writing partners. 

I'd like to invite you to outline what you think is a good format for an interest check and offer it as an article to be published in the Elliquian Herald and Post, our site newspaper.  You can PM the completed article to me.

GothicFires

First off, don't ignore the fact that you are asking volunteers to spend their time judging something that you can do yourself. That in itself is a huge reason not to ask for it.

How would it hurt's someone's feelings?.. oh perhaps the words 'i'm sorry but your not good enough to be featured.' Perhaps it is the best the person can do. Perhaps this person is trying the best they can or maybe they are shy and already had a difficult time putting something out there. There have been in the past and will be in the future people who ask how to draw people to their group or person games and other members politely make suggestions.

If you don't want to take the time to figure out if you want to rp an idea or not, then that idea wasn't for you anyway. While I may agree that I would want more information than fantasy, dragons and katanas, if I was interested in Japanese culture I might respond and add a suggestion or two. If the original poster responded back to me in a way that expanded on my suggestions then I would see that it was a person that I could be creative with. A person I can be creative with is more important to me than a GM that has every detail planned out and no room for flexibility.

and I completely disagree about the burden on a GM. A GM is a person who works to guide a story. It's not their responsibility to put every creative detail in to a story so you can only react to it. It is also the player's job to ensure that the GM is also enjoying themselves. As a gm I allowed my players to get their own goals and added them to mine. Sometimes what I had originally wanted didn't work out other times I the results of their work gave me ideas that alone I could not think of. Gaming/writing shouldn't be a burden to anyone.
looking for new games
discord: Agara#3507

Elina

I don't know, if I was into group RP, I might respond to a barebones request.  Different people like different things, and more detailed does not automatically equal better. 

Haibane

Quote from: GothicFires on May 12, 2012, 11:07:51 AM
A person I can be creative with is more important to me than a GM that has every detail planned out and no room for flexibility.
This.

In my view absolutely vital to a successful group RP.

There was an interest check thread once where the GM had attacked my enquiries and questions about their game world, and my suggestions to possibly enhance their game, as "demands", which struck me as pretty strange given the enquiring language I had used in structuring my reasonable questions and suggestions.

By approaching a GM and seeing how they respond to suggestions you can tell a great deal about whether the two of you are going to work together or not. An interest check thread is a multi-way creative discussion forum in my view, and players and GMs share an equal load in the process, with the GM being the arbiter if an idea someone suggests is something they (the GM) thinks would detract from the game's primary focus (such as a lesbian theme in a game world where the main intention is women enslaving men).

Sarena

Normally, when I update my interest check/stories wanted thread, I do not throw up overly detailed ideas.  Rather, I put up a basic synopsis of the plot I have in mind.  When someone PMs me about one of my plot ideas, that is when the real planning and discussions begin.  I would much rather writing a story with another person when we've both contributed to the development of the plot rather than feeling like I am dictating all of the details.  Because, once we agree to write a story together, my plot idea becomes our collaborative story and the idea is for us to both enjoy the writing of it.

Everyone has a different way of doing things, that doesn't make one way more right than the other.  They're just different.   :-)
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